Laravel 4 - Testing the ViewErrorBag

In Laravel 4, when you perform a validation on a form submission, you can pass the errors from the Validator back to the view

return Redirect::back()
    ->withErrors($this->validator)
    ->withInput();

So that the errors can be shown on the view

{{-- Error box --}}
@if ($errors->count())
    <div class='error-box'>
        <ul>
            @foreach ($errors->all() as $error)
                <li>{{{ $error }}}</li>
            @endforeach
        </ul>
    </div>
@endif

The $errors variable is the a Illuminate\Support\ViewErrorBag object, which apparently is a Laravel-thing used to handle errors.

This works in practice great, so fine by me.

Now let's talk testing:

This is my test for a Contact Form, when the email is invalid:

public function testFailureInvalidEmail() {

    $data = ['email' => 'invalid', 'message' => "lorem ipsum"];

    // Make request
    $this->post('/contact', $data, [], ['HTTP_REFERER' => URL::route('contact.create')]);

    // Check redirects
    $this->assertResponseStatus(302);

    //Check redirects to the right place
    $this->assertRedirectedToRoute('contact.create');

    // Check old input is forwarded
    $this->assertHasOldInput();

    // Check there are errors
    $this->assertSessionHasErrors();

    // Check the email is the error failing
    $this->assertSessionHasErrors('email');

    // Follow redirect
    $this->client->followRedirect();

    // Check HTTP Code 200
    $this->assertResponseOk();

    // Check old input is present
    $this->assertElementMatches('input[name=email]', 1, ['value' => $data['email']]);
    $this->assertElementMatches('textarea[name=message]', 1, [], [], $data['message']);
}

Everything works out great:

• I set the REFERER on the call, to handle the Redirect::back


• I check the redirect


• the old input


• the errors in the session


• The form elements are re-filled with the old input (The function assertElementMatches is just a method I defined to simplify the task)

MY PROBLEM:

There is one thing that I do not know how to test. That is that the messages are actually rendering on the DOM. For some reason if I add this check:

$this->assertCount(1, $this->filter(".error-box"));

I get an failure, saying that "0 does not match 1".

What can I do to test the rendering of the error?